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Hundreds of migrants storm across Spanish border from Morocco

Free: Migrants celebrate after scaling the fence that divides Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Melilla. Photo: AP

Hundreds of people forced their way through razor-wire barriers into Spain's North African enclave of Melilla on Wednesday, highlighting increasing pressure on a rare land-based route into Europe for illegal migrants.

More than 1000 stormed fences into the enclave and about 400 had managed to breach the border, the Spanish city's mayor Juan Jose Imbroda said in a radio interview.

The incident came as French police began expelling about 650 migrants from camps in the northern port of Calais despite opposition from rights groups.

Immigrants from all over Africa regularly attempt to cross the fences at Melilla and a second Spanish enclave along the coast, Ceuta. Both are surrounded by Moroccan territory and the Mediterranean sea.

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Spain has beefed up security there in recent months as numbers have swelled, in part in response to increased naval patrols that are discouraging attempts to get to Europe by boat.

"There were waves [of people], they were difficult to stop," Mr Imbroda told Spanish radio. "Moroccan police collaborated quite a bit, but the pressure was great, a chunk of the exterior fence gave way."

In March about 500 people forced their way across the Melilla border, and around 2000 have breached the 12-kilometre barriers so far this year, up from just over 1000 for the whole of 2013.

The immigrants who got into Melilla on Wednesday were heading for the city's temporary migration centre, where they are usually fed and given clothes.

The centre is designed to take in 500 people but is already sheltering about 2000. Some of those processed there make it across to mainland Spain while others are returned to Morocco.

Both Spain and Italy have attempted to persuade their northern European neighbours to bear a greater share of the increasing immigration burden, but talks on an EU-wide solution to the problem have made little progress.

Last October more than 360 people drowned within sight of Lampedusa, an Italian island off Tunisia that has long been a magnet for migrants, and in May a migrant boat sank in the sea between Libya and Southern Sicily, causing at least 14 deaths.

In February, the European Union asked Spain to explain why police had fired rubber bullets in warning when a group of African migrants tried to wade and swim to Ceuta. Fifteen drowned. Spain has said the migrants were not targeted by the shots.

In Calais, meanwhile, several migrants left voluntarily when they saw the busloads of riot police arrive and ring their camps, from which they had hoped to cross to Britain.

Confusion was widespread, notably at one of the largest camps housing mainly Syrian and Afghan exiles, because the migrants had nowhere else to go.

‘‘The people are on edge and are looking for the place where they will feel the safest,’’ Cecile Bossy, from the France-based Doctors of the World NGO, told AFP at the scene on Wednesday.

The authorities say the expulsion is aimed at stopping an outbreak of scabies in the camps, where there is no running water or proper sanitation. The people in the camps live in makeshift shelters and tents built with bits of wood and plastic sheeting.

Rights activists said about 200 migrants sheltered overnight at a food distribution centre and police were trying to evict them on Wednesday.

Some of the migrants put up improvised barricades with garbage trucks.

‘‘There will be no arrests except in the case of rebellion,’’ the prefect, or the top administrator of the Pas-de-Calais region Denis Robin said.

Ms Bossy said the evacuation was being carried out in a manner that was ‘‘anything but professional’’.

The migrants are being asked to board buses and be driven to meet French immigration officials to examine their individual cases after having taken showers and undergone treatment for scabies, a contagious skin infection.

Illegal camps of migrants seeking to cross the Channel have sprung up in the Calais area since the French authorities closed down the infamous nearby Sangatte immigrant detention centre in 2002. Their numbers have nearly doubled in recent weeks.

Immigration and borders featured prominently in the campaign for last week’s European parliament elections, in which far-right anti-immigration candidates scored historic victories, including in France and Britain.